A full-block market building in an eclectic revival mode, faced in speckled buff brick banded with terra-cotta ornament. The lower stories are set with bold pointed-Gothic arches carrying multi-paned steel windows, divided by battered brick buttresses and marked at the corners by round oculi in molded stone surrounds. A broad terra-cotta frieze of scallop-shell arches runs above, beneath ranges of smaller windows. Carved stone panels lettered "DELIVERY" and "BASEMENT" mark secondary entrances at the base. The upper floors, a later addition, carry round-arched windows set back above the original cornice line.
The city opened this Union Market in 1925, replacing an earlier market that had occupied the Broadway site since the 1860s. Mauran, Russell & Crowell designed it as the city's largest and most up-to-date public market, pairing ground-floor market halls with a three-story garage above — one of St. Louis's early indoor parking facilities. For decades it operated as one of the city's two principal markets. The market closed in the late 1980s as downtown retail declined, and in 1990 Drury Hotels bought the vacant building and converted it to the Pear Tree Inn, adding two floors above the original structure. Union Market is a St. Louis City Landmark (No. 103) and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places; it is one of only four surviving market buildings in the city.
